Another Reason

…why neither the People’s Republic of China nor the World Health Organization can be trusted.

Opposition from the Chinese government is preventing participants in a World Health Organization meeting on the Covid-19 pandemic from learning directly about one of the world’s biggest coronavirus success stories.
Taiwan hasn’t recorded a locally transmitted coronavirus infection in about seven months but has been blocked from participating in a virtual gathering this week [last week as this is posted] of the WHO’s 194-member World Health Assembly because of objections from Beijing, which considers the self-ruled island part of its territory.

WHO was carefully silent on the shunning, mindful of its master’s requirements.

Never mind that the Republic of China just might have some ideas on how to control the Wuhan Virus.

This is the WHO that Joe Biden wants us to cozy up to.

This is the PRC that Joe Biden wants us to trust so.

Mutual Trust

…requires mutuality. Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is preaching unity, bipartisanship, and trust. However, The Wall Street Journal, in its Tuesday edition, noted that

Biden will be under intense scrutiny from his left flank, which is already calling on him to shun incremental change in favor of an ambitious agenda and to populate his administration with progressives.

However.

Biden has shown himself since to be utterly untrustworthy.

His positions are unreliable; he’s flip-flopped on far too many principles, from the Hyde Amendment, to fracking bans, to the Green New Deal, and more.

forge deals in which each side wins something

He no longer adheres to that–it’s the Progressive-Democrat way or nothing all. That’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) position, and Biden has not once disputed with them over that. Not with a single syllable.

Operate in confidentiality

But only Progressive-Democrat confidentiality. Congressmen Adam Schiff (D, CA) and Jerry Nadler (D, NY), among many others, leak freely and selectively from confidential meetings. Here, too, Biden is carefully silent. He offers not a syllable of objection to such breaches, not a syllable of objection to leaks by others of confidential Presidential phone calls between President Donald Trump and other heads of state.

Attack ideas and not personalities

Biden has had nothing but ad hominem smears against Trump throughout his campaign, from his primary contests to his  general election campaign.

His fellow Progressive-Democrats and his extra-Party supporters on the Left are busily compiling enemies lists of all worked for Trump or supported him—all 72 million of us, since they include voters. Biden actively supports these tools of hatred and political tyranny with his considered decision to not denounce the lists and his list makers.

It’s not possible to arrive at bipartisan proposals with so untrustworthy a negotiating “partner.”

There can be no trust of Biden since he has no trust of us.

Foreign Takeovers of Domestic Companies

Great Britain is concerned with

strik[ing] a middle ground between welcoming foreign investment and protecting strategic industries from takeover, particularly amid concerns around acquisitions by Chinese state-backed companies.

Thus,

Under…proposed rules, investors would have to notify the government about transactions involving 17 sectors including nuclear, artificial intelligence, transport, energy, and defense.

That would seem to make a foreign investment law unnecessarily byzantine, and require revisiting at some aperiodic intervals.  After all, what’s not strategic today might turn out strategic tomorrow. This is illustrated by the timing of this proposal.

The rules update a takeover regime dating back 20 years that the government says is no longer adequate.

Well, NSS.

I have a better idea (also because I don’t lack for hubris). Don’t worry about strategic sectors. Bar all foreign takeover transactions unless and until they’re approved by a CFIUS-like facility. It would work for us, too.

Joe Biden’s Agenda

Assuming the unofficial results of the election become official. Here’s the nutshell:

Tax hikes for the rich, broadened health care coverage, and student loan forgiveness were some of the projects on candidate Biden’s to-do list.

Tax hikes on the rich will be tax hikes on the middle class and poor as well. Biden has promised to sharply increase Trump’s tax cuts on America’s businesses—which will result in higher prices to consumers, and those price increases will especially attack our poor. Biden has promised to increase personal income taxes on Americans making over $400,000, but he’s chosen not to index that to inflation, which means that more and more folks will face this tax. What’s not being talked about overmuch is his tax hike promise includes cutting back on the child care tax credit/subsidy—which hits our poor especially hard. Biden’s tax plan also includes vast increases on capital gains we have on our investments—which will badly hit our 401(k)s and IRAs. It’s true enough that taxes on investments inside those instruments go tax deferred until withdrawn, and then they’re taxed at ordinary income tax rates, which might make capital gains tax increases irrelevant. However, there are lots of stock investments outside of those tax deferred instruments, and that cap gains tax hike will deprecate those investment targets—which will deprecate the identical investment targets in otherwise tax deferred accounts.

Broadened health care coverage is the Medicare for All promise he made during the Progressive-Democrat primaries, which he now claims he doesn’t want, but which he signed up to in his Biden-Sanders Unity Platform. Even the watered down version that he now claims would, like his Medicare for All plan, throw millions of Americans off the private- or employer-provided health coverage plans that they currently have and prefer to have. Whether we want that or not. Keep in mind, too, the health care rationing and the loss of usefully timed access to specialized care that centrally controlled national health care systems universally devolve into.

Student loan forgiveness will just drive up the cost of future student loans as lenders are left high and dry. Unless they’re made whole from the forgiveness by…us taxpayers in the form of Federal make-whole payments—which is another tax on all of us, including those of us who make less than $400,000.

This makes Republican control of the Senate a Critical Item, and that control is by no means a done deal, for two reasons. Or maybe one-and-a-half reasons….

One reason is that North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis (R) only holds a 95,600 vote lead over the Progressive-Democrat rival in a race too close to call (as of Sunday). The two Georgia Senate races are going to a 5 Jan run-off, and the two Progressive-Democrat candidates are well positioned to pull out victories. Three wins would flip the Senate outright to Progressive-Democrat control. Two wins would flip the Senate to Progressive-Democrat control via the tie-breaking vote of the Progressive-Democrat Vice President.

The half reason is this: two Republican wins would leave the Senate with a Republican nominal majority of 51-49. Nominal because that would leave Utah Senator Mitt Romney (R) in a too-important position. While he’s usually a Republican vote, his animus toward President Donald Trump is such that he’ll be an unreliable Republican vote on Progressive-Democrat matters that would undermine or altogether undo a Trump policy.